Alleged hackers stole evidence to hamper Mueller probe

Self-proclaimed
Russian hackers have
stolen all evidence in an attempt to discredit the investigation of
an organization that is
charged with funding a
Russian propaganda campaign to interfere with the presidential
elections that took place in the United States in the year of 2016.

Prosecutors
who are handling the probe said in a recent court filing that
happened at Washington on Wednesday that a Twitter account called
@HackingRedstone came online on October 22 to claim that it has
hacked some of the evidence that belongs to the case. The document of
the court quoted the twitter post saying “We’ve got access to
the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian
server with info from the Russian troll case,”

The
prosecutors went on to add that the vast majority of the files and
information released by the hacker’s Twitter account were actually
“junk material that has nothing to do with the case” and
they were included
along with rest of the original files from the investigation to
hamper its investigation.

In
February 2018, Mueller formally accused 13 Russians and three Russian
companies with allegations of tampering election in 2016 to support
the then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. Later Donald Trump
defeated his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to become the US’s 45th
president.

Overall
a total of 34 people have pleaded guilty and have been indicted or
else swept up in the broader inquiry. The company that was
named in the charge sheet
included the Internet Research Agency which is known for its social
media trolling, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which is
reported to have provided the financial backing for executing the
operation, and Concord Catering.

The
Twitter account was linked
to an online file-sharing portal which it claimed to contain the
Mueller’s documents about the “IRA and Russian collusion.”

The
prosecutors wrote that “The data that appeared online was
altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed
at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in
the US political system,”

On
the very same day, a journalist reportedly contacted Mueller’s office
to report about receiving a Twitter message from an unknown person
who claimed that they have hacked into a Russian legal firm which had
received the evidence from Concord’s US-based law firm Reed Smith
LLP. The illegal activity outlined by prosecutors to illustrate the
concerns of US intelligence officials about the continued efforts of
Russia to interfere in US politics.

The
Prosecutor said, however, the FBI has found no evidence that US
servers were hacked,
and the Internet protocol address of the account that was used to
publish the materials were
from Russia. The management of Concord is currently being
prosecuted in the
Mueller’s investigation of US allegations that Moscow has hampered in
the US democratic process to help Donald Trump win.

Mueller
is also reportedly investigating whether there was an agreement
between Moscow officials and members of the Trump campaign. The
Kremlin denies any election interference and Trump denies there was
any collusion, calling the inquiry a political witch-hunt.

A
recent filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia
is the latest in a dispute between Concord’s US lawyers and
prosecutors over how the defense team could have shared highly
sensitive evidence with Concord’s corporate officers in Russian.

One
of amongst these officers is businessman Evgeny Prigozhin who is an
associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is
also known in Russia as
“Putin’s cook.” He has been hit with US charges over
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and is
sanctioned alongside his
company in the indictment brought by Mueller. In the charge sheet,
the prosecutors said that Russian defendants had adopted false online
identities to push divisive messages, traveled to the US to gather
intelligence and has conducted political rallies while posing as US
citizens. Prigozhin was also
included as one of the 13
people indicted. Prigozhin is not summoned to appear in a US court as
Russia does not have an extradition treaty with the US, but his
company Concord did hire US lawyers, to fight the charges.

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